112 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
think that a deer or prong-buck, hit in the same fashion, 
would have gone off and would have given a long chase 
before being overtaken. Judging from what others have 
said, I have no doubt that African game is very tough 
and succumbs less easily to wounds than is the case with 
animals of the northern temperate zone; but in my own 
experience, I several times saw African antelopes succumb to 
wounds quicker than the average northern animal would 
have succumbed to a similar wound. One was this impalla. 
Another was the cow eland I first shot; her hind leg was 
broken high up, and the wound, though crippling, was 
not such as would have prevented a moose or wapiti from 
hobbling away on three legs; yet in spite of hard strug¬ 
gles the eland was wholly unable to regain her feet. 
The impalla thus shot, by the way, although in fine 
condition and the coat of glossy beauty, was infested by 
ticks; around the horns the horrid little insects were clus¬ 
tered in thick masses for a space of a diameter of some 
inches. It was to me marvellous that they had not set 
up inflammation or caused great sores, for they were so 
thick that at a distance of a few feet they gave the appear¬ 
ance of there being some big gland or bare place at the root 
of each horn. 
The other impalla buck also showed an unexpected 
softness, succumbing to a wound which I do not believe 
would have given me either a white-tailed or a black-tailed 
deer. I had been vainly endeavoring to get a waterbuck 
bull, and as the day was growing hot I was riding home¬ 
ward, scanning the edge of the plain where it merged into 
the trees that extended out from the steep bank that hemmed 
in one side of the river-bottom. From time to time we 
